COMM-ORG Papers, Volume 16, 2010

Non-profit
over People: Have Organizers Stalled the Advancement of Social
Justice?

Rosemary Ndubuizu

Historic
images of death-risking sit-ins, water-hosed nonviolent protestors,
and fiery speeches against the brutalization of legalized apartheid
are emblazoned in the collective conscious of contemporary organizers
in the United States. Community organizing in the wake of the civil
and cultural rights movements of the 60s and 70s looks markedly
different in the 21st
century.

Now
when occasional stories of community organizing do reach the airwaves
of the media, they are often short stories about how this or that
organization organized a rally of hundreds and sometimes thousands
around select issues.

I
am one of the thousands of organizers nationwide who has been taught
to anticipate the second coming of the human rights movement, waged
through nonprofit organizations similar to the historic might of
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and National
Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Today,
we are fighting to preserve many of the ‘wins’ that were
supposedly achieved during the previous generation’s freedom
movement. Most organizers nationwide are primarily organizing to
preserve the rapidly depleting stock of subsidized or public housing
opportunities, expand living wage opportunities for poor people of
color, and wipe out the vestiges of institutionalized racism in
schools, prisons, military, etc.

Young
organizers like me enter the field of organizing employed by social
justice nonprofits and often with herculean dreams of mobilizing
millions of Americans to stand up against the continued legacy of
social injustice1.
More often than not, we are inspired by ideas of creating powerful
coalitions akin to the political and public clout of SNCC, NAACP, and
the Black Panther Party.

I
learned from the many discussions had at various community
organizers’ trainings that many of us operate from the
astonishingly egotistical belief that we, the ‘organizers’
will create the change that previous generations haven’t
achieved. We believe that organizers are the deciding factor that
will navigate the American population to the next stage of the human
rights movement. We still highlight the need for that ‘spell-binding,
mystical’ leader with the galvanizing spirit of Malcolm X or
Marcus Garvey to lead the people out of the darkness and misery of
the urban ‘ghettos’ and into the halls of civilized
integration with the educated elite.

Based
on the contemporary legislative goals and victories of community
organizations, we are largely fighting to mitigate
not eradicate the
hardship faced by people who happen to be poor and disenfranchised.

Perhaps
in the American spirit of expediency, we organizers believe that our
short-term goal of integration would be implemented sooner if we
adopt the methods of the ‘enemy’ (e.g. public officials
and corporations) and use it against them to garner public support,
and hopefully implement our solutions. Taking our cues from corporate
America’s pervasive marketing campaigns like Walmart’s
Save More. Everyday
Low prices and
DeBeer’s Diamonds
are Forever, we cling
relentlessly to the pursuit of dreaming up that hypnotizing slogan
that would convince Americans of the need to implement progressive or
even radical changes to reverse the continued tide of discrimination
and segregation.

We
pull from military textbooks and we identify the ‘targets’
or in lay person’s terms, public officials and decision makers,
that we conduct a ‘hit’ on to pressure them to implement
our policy solutions. We adopt the organizational structure of
for-profit organizations so that we can convince tax-sheltered
foundations like the ones created by Walmart, Ford, and DeBeers that
we are just as efficient, hierarchical, and mechanical as they are in
pursuing our work for justice2.

Maybe
the dream of creating the 21st
century human rights movement propelled by a messiah-centered
leadership followed by millions who were convinced through mass
marketing campaigns has been deferred because we just haven’t
found the right charismatic person yet. Or maybe our goals and
underlying ideology of how to create a human rights movement is
flawed and needs to be revisited and restructured.

Organizers
of today continue to adopt the same tactics of movement building that
serve the ‘elite’ of movement building—i.e.
organizers—and not the masses of people who are overwhelmingly
low-income women of color who fill the membership rolls of these
community organizations. Organizers today still adopt the belief that
the only change that must happen in society is to take place outside
of them. The public officials, corporations, and even the masses of
poor people must change in order for their definition of change to
materialize.

We
frequently say that ‘only if the masses recognize the need for
them to have better schools, well-maintained homes, more-than minimum
wage employment,’ we would be able to rally enough people to
sustain a human rights movement that would be seriously recognized by
the government and private industry. Our campaigns and vision for
social change slowly overtime have become focused on reforming the
‘capitalistic’ system so that a few more of the people we
‘work for’ get access to shelter, food, or legal counsel
services.

Based
on the feedback of many organizers, one would think that organizes
are immune from imperfection. Yet, if we look closely at the efficacy
of community organizers we can see that there is room for collective
improvement as well. Much of the organizing wins are primarily
focused on the number of housing units created or preserved, how many
laws were passed, and the number of people who attended our meetings.
We, organizers, who generally believe in the elevated status of
people over profit, have paradoxically elevated organization’s
stats over people. Organizers and their respective nonprofit
organizations rarely examine this contradiction. We organize for
change to take place outside of our organization but we have adopted
the same model of depersonalization that characterizes many of these
corporate institutions that we think sully the name of democracy3.

Much
of the legitimatized forms of organizing require organizers to become
champions of mobilization with minimal emphasis on how to build
healthy relationships with residents so that we organize
together—meaning we learn, analyze, and build movements for
equity and justice collectively. Instead, many organizers have been
advised to ‘know’ more than the residents and we must
decide what is best for campaigns and leaders— and in some
instances broker deals for the campaigns on behalf of the residents
‘we organize.’

We,
as organizers, frequently say that we believe in the power of the
people to instigate the change that we want to see but if we compare
the number of people who are directly affected by the issues, to the
number of the people who hold leadership positions within these
organizations, another contradiction emerges4.
Perhaps pulling from the same playbook of corporate America, many
community organizations fail to employ the residents from affected
communities. Many explanations have been offered to explain this lack
of grassroots leadership development: there are not many people from
the community that want to do this work; many of these people lack
the vision and tactics that college-bred organizers have; they don’t
have enough organizing history; and/or they are not professional
enough to handle the rigors of running an organization.

Community
organizations, and many of its organizers, are startlingly pursuing
the option of self-aggrandizement over their widely held beliefs of
collective justice and self-determination. Perhaps this phenomenon
has occurred because many of us have adopted the Darwinist
competitive spirit and we feel the immense pressure to ‘beat
out’ like-minded organizations in pursuit of the covetous title
of ‘best community organization’ that would be sought out
to receive meager funding from corporate foundations. Or maybe the
publicly abhorred offense of institutionalized racism and
capitalistic greed has infiltrated the walls of community
organizations?

Increasing
evidence suggests that the answer to this question is yes. In a race
to ‘legitimatize’ the work of organizers, many community
organizations have turned to corporate foundations to sell their
labor-power so that they may eat and survive in a capitalistic
economy. In turn, corporate foundations, which are overwhelmingly
controlled by the ‘white elite,’ offer their advice on
the organization’s campaigns, leadership, and mission.5
The micro-management role many corporate foundations have
traditionally played in community organizations has had a direct
impact on why human rights movements have been stalled.

Many
foundations and community organizations share an ideological bond: a
belief that America needs incremental reforms that do not threaten
the material status quo of the elite and middle class. Due to this
shared belief, organizers create narrow campaigns and we organize in
silos and isolation. We find ourselves organizing in direct
competition with each other when we don’t collectively present
our demands as a comprehensive and radical vision for change. With
this fragmented approach to organizing, we highlight individual
‘wins’ (see above) and praise the role that the organizer
played in achieving the win over recognizing the role and importance
of the ‘masses,’ particularly the role of women of color.

We
organize as a means to promote our own self-interest. At best, we may
organize for three years and transition into positions of authority
to dictate the direction of the organization. We organize because we
aspire to be leaders of organizations, not necessarily contributors
to movement building. Many of us organize to stay employed so we
create incremental campaigns that often undermine the role of
leadership development that would allow our people directly impacted
by these injustices to practice collective determination.

Because
of this nonprofit industrial complex, we have created a cult of
organizational preservation. We record our success not on how we have
progressed to the next stage of the human rights movement but whether
we brainstormed and passed a law that may or may not be enforced with
funding, how many members we recruited, how much money we have, or
how many media hits we got that year. We assume that this work cannot
be done without a paid staff, hierarchical organization, and paternal
leadership.

We
haven’t progressed to the next stage of the human rights
movement because we are not collectively honest about our vision for
change. Perhaps many of us prefer the status quo because we have been
able to sell our labor power to organizations supported by corporate
foundations and look ‘noble’ while organizing. Maybe we
prefer the status quo because we secretly endorse the bureaucratic
tactics and behaviors of corporate America and the government, as
suggested by our organizational structures and lack of grassroots
leadership development. Perhaps most of us prefer to
imperialistically impose our ideas of change upon the masses we
organize to increase our organizational power instead of co-dreaming
with our people.

We
must answer for ourselves whether our unilateral adoption of
traditional processes and structures can lead us to the radical
change many of us believe is possible.

Where
is the radical dreaming that must supplement our grassroots
organizing? While we may live in a culture that stymies the growth of
new ideas, we cannot be wedded to our jobs more than we are devoted
to advancement towards our human rights. We must build alternative
models for successful organizing that is inclusive.

There
is no quick fix to the long-standing struggle to reverse the
infiltration of traditional values and dreams that permeate the human
rights movement. But the first step could be that organizers
collectively realize that organizing for human rights is a life style
and not merely a paycheck or a fast track lane to organizational
stardom.

Notes

1
Perez, Amanda H., “Between Radical Theory and Community
Praxis: Reflections on Organizing and the Non-Profit Industrial
Complex,” The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the
Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Ed. By INCITE! Women of Color Against
Violence (2007).

5
King, Tiffany Lethabo and Osayande, Ewuare, “The Filth on
Philanthropy,” The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the
Non-Profit Industrial Complex, Ed. By INCITE! Women of Color Against
Violence (2007).

About the Author

Rosemary Ndubuizu is a native Californian with
ethnic roots in Nigeria. She spent four years being a culturally lover of
the District. Rosemary adores the persistence, tenacity, and fearlessness of
DC residents. She was honored to organize with them for over three years.
Rosemary began her lifelong pursuit of systemic, political retributions
against inequity and injustice and communal demonstrations in love while
studying in college—and presently practicing—the wonders of community
organizing, the current frontier of movement-building. Rosemary will join
Rutgers’ Graduate Community to pursue her studies in the Women and Gender
studies in Fall 2010.